Riley Nash (2 goals, 1 assist) recorded the fourth career two-goal game of his vaunted NHL life and he also tied his career-high in points which he last did on March 2, 2013 vs. Florida (1 goal, 2 assists). Tuukka Rask (25 saves, 12-8-3) continued his amazing in-season turnaround as he has earned his team valuable points in 10 games in a row (9-0-1). His goals against average during that stretch is 1.41 and his save percentage is a whopping .946. Who predicted this when he couldn't buy a win to save his life earlier this campaign? Boston is 8-1-1 in its last 10 games by the way, only Tampa Bay (26-7-2) has been better (9-1-0) lately. Two more good signs that this team is for real: their top line of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak combined for a grand total of zero points and likewise their power play produced nothing (0-for-2) yet they still pumped in five goals for their home fans (they are 13-5-3 at the Garden).
The Senators look nothing like the (lucky?) team that pushed the Penguins to seven games in the Eastern Conference Final last spring. They are 12 points out of a Wild Card spot in the East and 15 points behind Toronto (22-14-1)-who was leapfrogged by Boston (that still has 2 games in hand) this evening-so what are they waiting for? It's time to start figuring out who they want to keep and build around and which guys can get a decent return in a trade to a contending team. The Bruins got off to a fast start as they led 2-0 just 8:28 into the action: Kevan Miller jumped into the offensive zone for a juicy Craig Anderson (18 saves, 9-12-4) rebound for his first goal of the season (assisted by David Backes and Nash) and then rookie Danton Heinen continued his great stretch (3 goals, 6 assists in his last 9 games) with his 9th goal of the season after a sweet passing sequence by Ryan Spooner and Matt Grzelcyk.
Fredrik Claesson hit Noel Acciari with a dirty head shot (that I bet he'll hear from NHL player safety about in the near future) later in the first period but never fear because Tim Schaller came to the rescue of his former PC and current Bruins teammate. Schaller fought Claesson who was tagged with two majors (for fighting and a check to the head) and he also received a game misconduct. Schaller had no problem getting his second fighting major of the season and he also got a 10-minute misconduct along with a two-minute instigator penalty which was a bit of a head-scratcher. No worries though since Acciari surprisingly returned to Boston's bench to start the second period and ended up playing the rest of the game which was shocking since the hit looked like a textbook place to get a concussion. Maybe not.
Nash broke things open early in the second period as he got in on a breakaway (the 1st of his life?) and beat Anderson with what looked like a routine wrist shot that somehow eluded his glove hand for his third goal of the season, unassisted. Ottawa's only highlight of the proceedings came when Thomas Chabot banged in a one-timer at 3:49 of the second period to cut Boston's advantage to 3-1. Nash scored his second tally on a nice power move that showed off his sneaky decent hands. Anders Bjork had the lone assist on that one. Anderson was never pulled so he had the honor of giving up the last Bruins goal with 1:20 left in garbage time: Backes took a shot that deflected off the end boards and pushed it in the net, nice and easy for his fifth goal of the season. Grzelcyk and Heinen provided the helpers so each had multi-point performances which is swell.
For many reasons (mental and physical), tomorrow night's game in Washington (7:30, NESN) will be infinitely hard than this glorified exhibition. The Capitals (22-13-2) have won their last 11(!) games vs. the Bruins and Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy had already announced this afternoon that backup goaltender Anton Khudobin (8-2-2) will get the start vs. star netminder Braden Holtby after Washington started its backup Philipp Grubauer tonight in a 1-0 shootout loss at the Rangers (19-13-4). Both teams are in the second half of a back-to-back so neither should have much more energy than the other (Charlie McAvoy was the only Bruin to play over 20+ minutes vs. Ottawa but he's Captain America so who cares?), especially after the mandatory three-day break for Christmas. At some point, the B's are going to beat the Capitals again so why can't it be tomorrow night in our nation's capital? Basically everything is going right for the Bruins at the moment so that would be a nice albatross for them to get out of the way before the New Year.
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